Opinion: The privacy track has moved out of niche areas and may become an important narrative in crypto by 2026

On January 12, the Crypto Research Institute’s Stacy Muur shared her insights, stating that market data shows privacy-related crypto assets are moving from the fringe to mainstream attention. By 2025, privacy coins are expected to outperform Bitcoin and Ethereum overall, demonstrating stronger resilience during market volatility, while on-chain real usage continues to rise, with their transaction share increasing from approximately 9.7% to 11.4%. Currently, Monero and Zcash still dominate privacy transaction flows, and the total market cap of the privacy sector has surpassed $24 billion. Meanwhile, several infrastructure teams are beginning to redesign privacy capabilities as the default layer of blockchain architecture rather than optional features, indicating that privacy is becoming an integral part of the underlying infrastructure. This trend appears to be a long-term strategic layout rather than a short-term rotation. Against the backdrop of ongoing strengthening of global regulation and on-chain monitoring, the demand for on-chain anonymity and transaction privacy is rising, and privacy coins and related tools are expected to become a key narrative in the crypto market by 2026.